When 'Rescue' Means Eviction

By

Philip Shishkin

Updated Feb. 26, 2009 12:01 am ET

In 2003, Daphne Webb, a 73-year-old mother of nine, had a heart attack, quit her cleaning job and was soon struggling with medical bills. She and her husband fell behind on the mortgage payments on their white clapboard house in Montclair, N.J.

"Everything came down all at once," says her husband, William, whose $45,000-a-year income as a bus driver wasn't enough to keep the family financially afloat. By 2006, the Webbs were facing foreclosure.